But a prayer, methinks, yet riseth sore To God, to Faith, God's ancient daughter— The Faith that over sundering seas Drew her to Hellas, and the breeze Of midnight shivered, and the door Closed of the salt unsounded water.
— from Medea of Euripides by Euripides

Accordingly, seeing that our senses sometimes deceive us, I was willing to suppose that there existed nothing really such as they presented to us; and because some men err in reasoning, and fall into paralogisms, even on the simplest matters of geometry, I, convinced that I was as open to error as any other, rejected as false all the reasonings I had hitherto taken for demonstrations; and finally, when I considered that the very same thoughts (presentations) which we experience when awake may also be experienced when we are asleep, while there is at that time not one of them true, I supposed that all the objects (presentations) that had ever entered into my mind when awake, had in them no more truth than the illusions of my dreams.
— from Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences by René Descartes

It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious.
— from A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens

But just as Karen was lifting up her foot to get in too, the old soldier said: "Dear me, what pretty dancing shoes!"
— from Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen by H. C. (Hans Christian) Andersen

The old showman, sitting down to his barrel-organ, stirred up the souls of the pigmy people with one of the quickest tunes in the music-book; tailors, blacksmiths, gentlemen and ladies all seemed to share in the spirit of the occasion, and the Merry Andrew played his part more facetiously than ever, nodding and winking particularly at me.
— from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Then, just as the assistant was booking the order, she said: “Do you know, I’ll wait.
— from Howards End by E. M. (Edward Morgan) Forster

The men of his family had never been idlers since the recrudescence of ancestral energy in the person of Morgan Ruyler I; it was no part of their profound sense of aristocracy to retire on inherited or invested wealth; they believed that your fine American of the old stock should die in harness; and if the harness had been fashioned and elaborated by ancestors whose portraits hung in the Chamber of Commerce, all the more reason to keep it spic and up to date instead of letting it lapse into those historic vaults where so many once honored names lay rotting.
— from The Avalanche: A Mystery Story by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

But his best accomplishment is a gift that one seldom sees developed——" "What is that?" exclaimed both his listeners at once.
— from The Mask: A Story of Love and Adventure by Arthur Hornblow

When wealth and poverty meet each other face to face, the one the master and the other the dependent, the one exalted and the other debased, it is perhaps hardly matter for surprise that the dependent and debased and powerless faction, in envy of their opponents' supremacy, should demand, not simple reform, but absolute community and equality of wealth.
— from The Altruist in Politics by Benjamin N. (Benjamin Nathan) Cardozo

Mathew, who, like the other servants, secretly distrusted and disliked her for differing from the ordinary pattern of professed lady's-maids, was, on this particular occasion, so subdued by her manner and her tone as she thanked him, that he offered to carry her candle for 11 her to the door of her mistress's bed-chamber.
— from The Dead Secret: A Novel by Wilkie Collins

“Then I wish you would give me a hand with this one,” said she, despairingly.
— from Bud: A Novel by Neil Munro

Still the old skipper stood doggedly on the bridge, refusing to surrender.
— from The Rival Submarines by Percy F. (Percy Francis) Westerman